TUSKA OPEN AIR FESTIVAL 2013

REVIEW AND PHOTOS BY ARTO LEHTINEN AND MARKO SYRJALA

The Tuska Open Air Festival is definitely a real metal festival institution amongst all other metal festivals in Europe. This current area, Suvilahti, almost located in the heart of Helsinki, only a few kilometers away from the downtown, is the new home for Tuska for the second time. Suvilahti is more like an industrial environment with burning and hot asphalt underfoot. Tuska faced a serious battle to pull the audience as another festival named Rock The Beach was arranged on the same weekend in the Helsinki area. The line-up of that festival mostly pulled the normal radio friendly audience whereas the die-hard metal freaks arrived at the Tuska Open Air Festival. Tuska however managed to pull about 25.000 visitors during the weekend. That was pretty good as the line-up did look good, not that tempting to pull a mainstream audience.

Nightwish and Testament, and of course the legendary Danish King Diamond were headliners, but of course a few cult metal bands like Bolt Thrower, Lama, had to be witnessed. The festival was an nice success although the event wasn’t sold out. Metal-Rules.com was present to check out a lot of bands and enjoy the metal in different forms.

REALM OF CHAOS, the classic 1989 album from British death metal legends BOLT THROWER, has been remastered with Full Dynamic Range audio and is available now on CD/DVD and limited edition vinyl LP.

REALM OF CHAOS is the band’s second full-length album and their Earache Records debut, which cemented the band’s position in 1989 among the heaviest of the underground scene. The album features new artwork from the original artist, JOHN SIBBICK.

The album has been specially remastered from the original tapes using Full Dynamic Range (FDR) mastering, allowing the music’s nuances to shine through, giving the whole album a more ferocious and dynamic sound and enabling the listener to immerse themselves in the full audio heaviness like never before.

The REALM OF CHAOS Full Dynamic Range CD includes a bonus DVD featuring a full, previously-unreleased live performance from the legendary 1989 “Grindcrusher” tour. The album is also available on limited edition vinyl.

Bolt Thrower have continued their ‘quality not quantity’ approach to playing live and that has definitely paid off. In 2010 they played a number of shows and festivals across Europe, and from playing more intimate underground shows (in keeping with their roots), they can also pull off playing to a festival crowd of 30,000 people. That’s why, as they reached and moved beyond their 25th Anniversary, Bolt Thrower are still at the top of their game.

Finally, after only a handful of North American dates in the past few years, limited to Maryland Deathfest, Bolt Thrower has announced the Return To Chaos tour! The band will perform seven shows across the US in May. The confirmed dates are listed below, and include Maryland Deathfest, Chaos in Tejas, as well as club shows in Pomona, CA, Seattle, WA, Chicago, IL, and more.

Bolt Thrower adds: “And it’s our pleasure to announce that for all the club shows we’ll be sharing the stage with our fellow compatriots Benediction; and for the Pomona and Oakland shows we’ll also be joined by the mighty Autopsy!”

More Bolt Thrower vinyl for has been pressed for North America! Those who missed out on Those Once Loyal, Honour Valour Pride, and Mercenary last time around can now order vinyl on indiemerch.com/metalbladerecords.

On Janaury 17th, 2012, Metal Blade will re-issue the three BOLT THROWER albums Mercenary, Honour Valour Pride and Those Once Loyal on vinyl. All three albums are Gatefold LPs in coloured vinyl! Make sure to pre-order your copies ASAP since orders are going fast: http://www.metalblade.com/boltthrower. Metal Blade Records Europe released their versions on October 21st/24th, and can be ordered now!

BOLT THROWER comments on their 25th Anniversary: “Anniversaries are kind of easy to achieve. For a band, just don’t split up and you’ll reach one, whether it’s 10, 20 or 35 years. And this year we’ve reached ’25 years of not splitting up’!

We managed to stop others from making a big fuss about it, and didn’t give in to the numerous offers and suggestions on how we should cash in on it! But it has made us appreciate the opportunities we’ve been given since 1986, and that we’ve been able to do everything we wanted to do without compromising in any way. We’ve been lucky enough to have played a lot of killer shows with great bands and met a lot of very cool people over the years, and we think that’s the stuff that deserves some kind of celebration.

So, we want to organize a Bolty Birthday Bash, where we can reunite with some of these bands and invite you, the people who have supported us over the last 25 years. We were hoping to have everything worked out by now, but it turns out organizing a free show comes with its own unique problems, but we’ll get there in the end! Well, that’s all we can say for now, there will be more news to come soon, so keep checking back.”

Last year, the long time British death metal war mongers Bolt Thrower released a brilliant album called THOSE ONCE LOYAL. The band kicked off a long European tour that for the first time ever saw Bolt Thrower finally visit Finland. It was a plesant suprise to have the opportunity to talk to both Karl and Barry before they unleashed one hell of a gig at Nosturi in front of over 500 maniacs.